Just bringing this to attention, there are a lot of interesting things and information, old articles, interviews, screenshots etc.

Some interesting facts:

Tommy was originally supposed to be called Tony.

There was some talk of a multiplayer:

Quote:

Gamers Central: We know of 2 multi player modes, Deathmatch and Capture the flag. Is anything known about the other modes at this time?

Dan Vavra: Not yet.

Quote:

AT: Can you tell us a bit more about the multi-player missions?

DV: We plan to have something in Counter Strike style, like Police vs. Gangsters in large missions from game and racing on the circuits and car chases in the city. But our main goal is single player right now.

Boats were originally planned (this is most likely talking about Happy Birthday):

Quote:

Gamers Central: The game will feature over sixty vehicles for the player to drive. Does this include other vehicles than land based ones? (Any aircraft, boats?)

Dan Vavra: There'll be some action with boats, but to say that it'll be possible to pilot any … well, we'll see.

Last edited by haista__ on Thu Apr 21, 2016 5:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

Awesome! Thx for sharing it.
Now that this has been brought up, I'd like to request the fans, if they can share any link(s) to all the initial "interviews" ( be in czech / English ) of Vavra and Team discussing about the games development in DETAIL like the physics, driving, shooting, story, etc..????
Yes, I checked through the links provided in the official pages as mentioned in the website shared by OP, but many important ones like the 6 page PC gamer interview seems unavailable while a couple of others totally inaccessible, namely, Gamespot.
I am really interested in reading all the interviews ( not previews ) related to the game and published in and around the year 2000 and 2001.
Thanks._________________

This is a very interesting video from 2000 it seems, but it's in Czech.

Quite early build, the driving is very different and the character model acts differently aswell. Is this pre-LS3D? Apparently the switch was made in 2000-07-03, with the older engine being called Insanity2.

This was my obsession some years back, so I've done quite a bit of research.

The engine shown in one of the videos was a modified version of the one used for Hidden & Dangerous, IS's previous game. The switch was then made to an engine built from scratch (LS3D) when they decided the current engine wasn't capable of doing the things they wanted the game to do.

LS3D continued development in 2004, two years after the release of Mafia, and was given cloth and shooting mechanics, as well as early ragdoll and environment physics in preparation for Mafia 2, but then IS as we know it dissolved and the remaining members became a subsidiary of 2K (we all know how well that ended up working), and due to ability limitations the LS3D engine was scrapped and a new one was built from scratch.

The last build of the LS3D engine in 2004

Also, for information's sake, the video in German was Fourth-build Alpha gameplay, not Beta. I suspect this was literally just after they had switched over the using the LS3D engine, when the engine itself was in its infancy (you can see that the FOV, aiming mechanics and movement are different, but the rendering of the draw distance and physics look very similar to the final version).

The game went through several different builds and each one had various nuances that differed, but as far as I can define these were the main stages:

As stated above, each category had earlier and later stages where things were added or improved. Mafia's Alpha stages all ran on various builds of the H&D engine, while Beta used LS3D and was visually closer to the final product - this is with the exception of the 'transition period' build, where the final Alpha stage appears to have run on an early version of the LS3D engine._________________